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Women Breadwinners and Fox News

A segment from Fox News simultaneously containing a stunning (though, perhaps, unsurprising) level of sexism, and a wonderful response from Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. What’s especially telling about this exchange is that Kelly is rightly, intelligently, factually, and articulately, taking Erick Erickson and Lou Dobbs to task–and they seem to fail to grasp this. More than once, she’s met with giggles from her interlocutors.

7 thoughts on “Women Breadwinners and Fox News”

Reblogged this on Coffee and conversations and commented:
It’s astonishing how these sort of thoughts are still widely accepted and that public figures that hold great influence are so openly sexist. Something really needs to change. Their treatment of Megyn Kelly reminds of David Cameron’s ‘calm down dear’.

I also have to give Megyn Kelly props. She really came at them both hard with serious facts and evidence and while they giggled, both Mr. Dobbs and Mr. Erickson looked and sounded unprepared and uninformed.

Very unfortunately, nothing new here in terms of debate. Nonethless, I strongly laud anchor Megyn Kelly for most every way that she handled this segment.

Readers might want to note that according to institutional analyses of how the major media operate (such as Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model), we should expect major corporate sources such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, for instance, often if not frequently both to appear fair/objective and to include a diversity of views, especially the excellent views defended (and the horrible views argued against) here by Megyn Kelly. Such typical inclusion helps maintain a misleading facade about expected standards generally. Still, in such cases – apart from the alleged ignoble social function served – Kelly’s work here is very important (for audiences to hear…) and certainly deserves the praise I happily see it receiving (though sadly also with knowledge of many ignorant/mal-educated masses who side with her segment guests).

As an aside, anyone who’s been unfortunate enough to have seen as much Fox News as I have will be astonished by how thoughtful this conversation was in comparison to everything else that airs on the channel, the depravity of Erickson’s conclusions and the inadequacy of the arguments notwithstanding. “What I would acknowledge immediately is that Erick is wrong about nature itself.” — Who thought they would ever hear anything remotely resembling that sentence on Fox News?

1) I also reacted at Dobb’s comment about nature itself–definitely didn’t expect that line from him.

2) I appreciated that Megyn Kelly refused to get distracted by the tittering of Erickson and Dobbs and engaged in some hardball journalism when they tried to deflect or get around the questions. Even though they had the look of “oh boy, angry woman, we better be careful, hehe” she rightfully took their comments seriously (yay for her having been a lawyer?). I’ve certainly rolled my eyes at her a number of times, but I also think that she is the kind of spearhead that can change the cultural climate of a place–and ironically I think that is partly because she is oblivious to just how bad the problem of sexism is and because she isn’t sympathetic to feminism as an identity or cause. In that sense, I think it’s weirdly good for there to be non-feminist people like her doing what she’s doing. (*Even if what she’s doing is only fighting the few fights that her privilege doesn’t insulate her from) When even the people who consider themselves on the opposite side of the political spectrum as feminism think something is sexist, it adds to the seriousness of that claim. ”

3) Whenever I talk about Megyn Kelly, I need to share my favorite comment from her, ever, which is when she asked Karl Rove during the 2012 election, “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better? Or is this real?” She was the person who finally called out Rove, live I think, for being delusional about his predictions for the presidential election.